The objective is to functionally unite the wide variety of image processing equipment working in the laboratory so that the results of procedures performed on one processor may be available to the user at any other component. To this end two major software packages have been specified, designed, implemented and largely debugged. These are 1) BMIO, a basic set of input output routines which provide for interprocessor transfer of generalized digitized images, and 2) SPIDER a data independent context free packet switching network in which our DEC System 20 is the permanent master.